Preview

The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism Essay

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2713 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Yellow Wallpaper Symbolism Essay
The Yellow Wallpaper is a story which is told in the first individual by the Narrator, a young lady. The Narrator and her husband, John, have leased a substantial, empty colonial estate for the midyear. The Narrator portrays the home as haunted, or possibly feeling extremely odd, and relates that her husband John, a refined physician laughs at her notions. The Narrator, on the other hand, furtively wants to stimulate the thought that the house is haunted. The Narrator is experiencing anxious misery and furtively accepts that on the off chance that her husband was not a doctor she may recoup all the more rapidly. Notwithstanding, both John and the Narrator's sibling, additionally an expert physician, have advised her that she is fit as a fiddle …show more content…
While various symbols could be referred to from the story to bolster this, there are four prevalent symbols all through the story that give trustworthiness to the woman's suffrage subject. The Yellow Wallpaper itself is typical of the mental screen that men endeavored to place on women amid the 1800s. The color yellow is frequently connected with disorder or shortcoming, and the writer's secretive illness is an image of man's oppression of the female sex. The two windows from which the writer frequently associates out of, watching the world however separated from it, is illustrative of the potential outcomes of women if seen as equivalents by the inverse sex. All moves makes place around evening time (Thomas, 2009). In old stories, the moon is ascribed to the feminine and the sun is credited to the masculine. Wallpaper, an outfitting connected with home life, is utilized to speak to the social example of male strength and female accommodation that delineates the Narrator's mental freedom. Generally as the wallpaper with its detaining example actually encompass the Narrator, the course of rest and calm recommended by her physician/husband comes to subdue her body and psyche. Despite the fact that the Narrator's body stays caught compelled to creep by the house and the wallpaper; her psyche liberates itself, first through her diary and afterward by succumbing to craziness and fancy (Thrailkill, 2002). The incongruity that craziness was the thing which her physician/husband most looked to keep away from just aggravates the Narrator's weakness. For, as she watches a few times in the story, her physician/husband has great expectations and is doing what he accepts right. This puts the Narrator in the position of seeming thankless, and accordingly meriting more treatment in the event that she contends against it. The parallels between the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator begins the story with the appearance of the house…

    • 244 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman unveil the expectations of certain characteristics that women should possess by men such as, obedience, submissiveness, beauty, passivity, and purity. The husband, John, portrayed in this short-story treats the narrator, or his wife, as if she is oblivious and as if she is merely a child evident in his diction. He refers to her as a “little girl” and therefore does not take her opinions into serious consideration and simply overlooks her requests. To coerce his own opinions upon the narrator, he sugarcoats his thoughts as an attempt to make them appeal to her: “My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, and that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind!” The narrator is sent to an asylum due to her mental condition while her actions are restricted by John as a part of her treatment. The narrator makes it evident that she is severely repressed by her husband’s authority, as she interrupts her own train of thought with her husband’s instructions for treatment. As she neglects her own thoughts and turns her attention to John’s authority, she enters the process of increasing obsession and madness: “So I will let it alone and talk about the house.” The…

    • 1033 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was published in 1892 after Gilman suffered from “a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia” (Gilman, “Why I wrote”) and was placed under the care of Silas Weir Mitchell. Mitchell’s cure for women with Gilman’s affliction were told to “live as domestic life as far as possible, have but two hours’ intellectual life a day and to never touch a pen, brush, or pencil again” (Gilman, “Why I wrote”). While following Mitchell’s advice, Gilman’s condition slowly worsened and only after she returned to working did her health improve. Using the knowledge she gained from the experience, Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The short story features a woman by the name of Jane, who is…

    • 1417 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, symbolism is well presented throughout the story because the narrator feels due to her nervous illness she is trapped in “yellow wallpaper” though the wallpaper is really stands for her being caged by surroundings. The wallpaper is a horrid unclean, almost revolting color as observed by the narrator it is also “strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is dull yet lurid orange is some places. A sickly sulphur tint in others (Gilman 87).” The most terrible thing is that there is a shapeless pattern that fascinates her and intrigues her for hours to figure out how it is patterned. The narrator stares in the moonlight and sees a desperate women crawling and creeping, in…

    • 179 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Arsenic Old Lace

    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Gilman, portrays a small family consisting of a husband (John) and a wife (Jane) and some children, along with a housekeeper (Jennie) (Gilman 473,477). John is the head of the household and it is his duty to care and protect his family; in…

    • 648 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “ The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman, an important symbol is the Yellow Wallpaper, which represents the unknown woman’s illness and life. Throughout the story as the woman’s mental health gets worse, the wallpaper pattern gets more unbearable. She becomes obsessed with the atrocious pattern, and repulsing color. When the narrator and her husband arrive at the mansion, she knows she is depressed but nothing too serious. And when she first sees the wallpaper, she thinks it’s disturbing, but she can handle it. The narrator says, “ It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.” The narrator is using personification to express how the wallpaper is almost abusing her and how she has no control over it.…

    • 283 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On the surface, the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper simply shows an insane woman who began suffering from depression after the birth of her child. The narrator was placed into a house, which was in the middle of nowhere, where she received dangerous treatment and often gets belittled by her husband, who is also her doctor. Her treatment required her not to do anything active, especially writing. Although some would conclude that the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper is just about an insane woman struggling with post-partum depression and isolation, it shows the protagonists struggle with trying to break out of the mental constraints she has been placed under and her need for self-expression through her journal.…

    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is written in the perspective of the narrator as her journal where she reveals her deepest most personal thoughts about herself and her life, yet she still remains a very mysterious character. Her name is never revealed, and the reason the author does not reveal her name is so the story of her struggle could represent the struggles of many other going through the same situation. It is clear from the beginning of the story that she is an unreliable narrator because it is mentioned that her husband who is a doctor has diagnosed her with temporary nervous depression with slight hysterical tendencies. She seems to be a very creative and sensitive person who is a writer, but she is forbidden from writing in her journal by her husband who thinks that too much mental stimulation will only make her condition worse.…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” written as a first person journal entry is a great example of symbolism in the literature. The narrator uses various symbols like window,nursery and wallpaper to serve as reflection of protagonist’s state of mind and indication of societal suppression. It was written during early-to-mid nineteenth century positions female imprisonment within domestic sphere. The narrator sets the wallpaper as a symbol of protagonist state of the mind. The pattern of the wallpaper is illogical and chaotic which is very similar to the sanity of narrator. In the beginning of "The Yellow Wallpaper" the narrator seemed to be very imaginative and highly expressive woman, for example she remembers terrifying herself…

    • 422 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an early work of feminism and mental illness awareness. Through the eyes of the narrator, we learn that she is struggling to get better after her husband John, a physician, offers ‘rest cure’ as a treatment for her depression (Brown 51). She soon becomes fixated with the imaginary woman that lurks within the yellow wallpaper. As the story goes on, the narrator progressively becomes more insane. This is shown as her only concern is the creeping woman in the wallpaper and how to catch her. As a result, we soon realize that the woman creeping in the wallpaper are parallel to the protagonist herself, both are trapped, “creeping” to get out and longing to be free. This essay…

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper is about a woman who was depressed and her husband who was a physician whom put her in a bedroom with yellow wall paper. In her mind she describes the paper as having sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. She states it is dull enough to confuse the eye in the following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke…

    • 994 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In society, it is very common to see individuals suffer from depression disorders. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman portrays a woman who goes mentally insane after giving birth to her baby. Her husband is her doctor and he diagnoses her with a temporary depression disorder, which raises the question of post-partum depression. While staying at an estate during the summer, he confines her to one room in the home, and is unable to do anything she loves. Rao argues that the wallpaper is one dynamic symbol, which is quickly evident throughout. In Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the symbolism is how she portrays her feelings and exaggerates her imagination.…

    • 644 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Symbolism, in many aspects, can affect humans as well as characters in a negative or positive way. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” it is obvious that the symbol that is used, being the yellow wallpaper, affects the narrator in a negative way. As the story progresses and the narrator is forced to stay in the room covered in yellow wallpaper, she starts to gain a sense of who she is as well as a sense of self-expression. Suffering from her illness, the narrator is secluded from everyone and as time passes the wallpaper starts to come to life and causes her harm. As the narrator looks more and more into the wallpaper, she starts to notice the different types of delicate patterns in which lead her to seeing women behind the wallpaper. She starts to feel as if she has legitimately been isolated and can’t help but see people behind the yellow wallpaper. “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard “(Gilman 487). Having the narrator see women from the wallpaper goes to show the reader that she is becoming delusional as time goes by, and soon her actions play a role in deciding to rip off the wallpaper off. The reader can definitely understand that the narrator is aware that she does have an illness that has affected her in multiple ways now, but does not want to accept how insane she truly has…

    • 1021 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The chosen passage is an extract from “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Gilman. In this story, the narrator is staying in a house with her husband John, Mary, her baby, and John’s sister. There is yellow wallpaper in the narrator’s room which for some reason seems to annoy her. The yellow wallpaper’s imagery indicates the narrator’s state of mind, her relationship with her husband and her life in general.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Summary: This week we read the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the Vanity Fair article Rethinking the American Dream by David Kamp and the short story Thank You M’am by Langston Hughes. These three pieces of writing all had the common theme of tackling with expectation versus reality and the way our perceptions of ourselves and others can fail us.…

    • 589 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays